For many of the islands communities, the ports and piers hold symbolic as well as obvious practical significance. “They facilitate trade and communication as an islands economy grows beyond the means by which it can support itself, they come to symbolise survival and possibility”. (Reference: https://collections.societe.je/archive/books/editions-emile/edem04-victoria-and-albert-on-the-piers?)

Basque fishermen were travelling to the region to fish and by 1580, around 10,000 fishermen (European) were making the transatlantic journey to the area each year to fish for cod.

Channel Island fishermen were among these and by the 1750s they had set up profitable trade routes between Canada, Europe and America with establishing bases on the Gaspé Coast where they could salt and prepare the cod. 

Jersey had many ships that carried on two separate types of trade. The biggest going to newfoundland or thereabouts in early spring or summer for cod and returning in autumn usually through Spanish or Mediterranean ports.

“In the early 1950s Jersey fishermen pioneered the Channel fishery for crab, using offshore vivier boats previously unknown outside of Brittany. Those boats went on to exploit new grounds as far north as West Scotland and the Hebrides.

Jersey merchants, with the plentiful landings of crab and lobster were able to influence European prices and help keep the island on the map. Back then the fleet used to lay up along the wall, on the mud where the St Helier marina is now sited.”

Most of the cod was sold to Mediterranean ports where there was a large demand due to the countries in the region being largely Roman Catholic and having regular ‘fish-days’ every week. Goods such as cargoes of wine, brandy, dried fruit, citrus fruit and salt were brought back from these ports, and often taken straight to some English/ Northern European port, then returning home to Jersey with a third cargo though some came straight back to the Island.

The island has gained from its constitutional relationship with Britain and the legacies of colonialism based on a slave plantation economy during the first Industrial Revolution through significant changes made due to industrialization.

The islands has it’s history intertwined with legacies of colonialism including the aspect of the slave plantation economy.

Direct impact of slave plantation made not have been as strongly marked in Jersey compared to other regions, it still influenced the development of the island.

Jersey’s constitutional relationship with Britain and the echoes of colonialism during the Industrial Revolution likely had an impact on various aspect of Jersey’s economy, identity and it’s societal structures over time.